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Legal Process (legal + process)
Selected AbstractsThe Shared History: Unknotting Fictive Kinship and Legal ProcessLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Marie-Andrée Jacob This article looks in detail at a form of kinship that is contingently crafted and mobilized to achieve specific purposes. On the basis of ethnographic material collected among local actors within bodies that regulate kidney transplants in Israel, the objective of this article is to expand the sociolegal definition of fictive kinship. I use transplant relatedness to refer to the set of formal and informal norms that grow out of social and medico-legal practices in the field of kidney donations and sales; however, the form of fictive kinship that appears in this specific field tells us something broader about kinship as it is constructed and performed in legal processes more generally. The configuration of fictive kinship that is examined is the shared history (historia meshoutefet). I argue that in the present case, the shared history alters social and legal deep-seated understandings of kinship and ultimately makes the distinctions between allegedly real and pseudo-kinship collapse. [source] Are psychiatrists affecting the legal process by answering legal questions?CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 2 2008Timothy Hardie Background,Psychiatrists are often asked to answer legal questions. The extent to which they answer strictly legal rather than medical matters is not known. Aim,To investigate how strongly psychiatrists in England and Wales express opinions on one legal question , that of diminished responsibility in respect of a murder charge, and how this is related to outcome in court. Method,Our data were extracted from psychiatric reports and case files supplied by the then Department of Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) on cases heard in the Crown Courts between 1 January 1997 and 31 December 2001 in which the defence of diminished responsibility had been raised. The cases had been selected by the Law Commission in their earlier review of partial defences to murder. We devised a reliable system of rating the presence/absence and strength of expression of a legal opinion in the medical reports. We tested the data for relationship between nature and strength of opinion and progression to trial and verdict. Results,Psychiatric reports were available on 143 of 156 cases in which diminished responsibility was considered. They yielded 338 opinions on at least one aspect of diminished responsibility. In 110 (93%) of the 118 cases in which there was a diminished verdict, this was made without trial and, therefore, without reference to a jury. In only eight (27%) out of the 30 cases that went to trial, was a diminished responsibility verdict made. Half of the reports (169) gave a clear opinion on diminished responsibility, a third (121) invited the court to draw a particular conclusion and only 11% (36) provided relevant evidence without answering the legal questions. When there was an opinion or an invitation to make a finding on the legal question, a trial was less likely. A trial was also less likely if reports agreed on what the verdict should be. Conclusions,Psychiatrists frequently answer the legal question of diminished responsibility. The judiciary and medical experts should join in research to examine the consequences of different styles or approaches in presentation of essentially similar evidence in court. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] MANAGING PLACE AND IDENTITY: THE MARIN COAST MIWOK EXPERIENCEGEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2002JENNIFER SOKOLOVE ABSTRACT. Group identity serves as a mechanism for claiming rights of control and access to land in the United States. Public land managers face myriad identity-based claims to land in their care. Identity shapes claims that must appear valid within the strictures of a legal system created by a dominant culture to serve its interests. The very form of those systems,of which public lands are a large part,makes possible the expression of particular forms of identity. The story of the Coast Miwok community and the Point Reyes National Seashore suggests that geographical links among identity, landscape, and history are actively constructed through political work and rarely are as obvious as they first appear. Both the formal legal process of federal tribal recognition and restoration and the far less formal Coast Miwok claims to land at Point Reyes National Seashore teach important lessons about neotraditional identity-based claims to public land. [source] Voices in court: lawyers' or litigants'?HISTORICAL RESEARCH, Issue 186 2001Joanne Bailey Written records of litigation lie at the heart of numerous studies of English society and culture. Although some documents appear to demonstrate individuality, historians advise that they be used cautiously since the words of litigants and deponents were filtered through the legal profession. This article uncovers the process of mediation by exploring the interaction between litigants and their legal advisers, using correspondence received by church court proctors. It reveals that some parties had an active role in their litigation and, crucially, that their own motives could obscure the reality underlying their lawsuits as much as the legal process. [source] Forensic Risk Assessment in Intellectual Disabilities: The Evidence Base and Current Practice in One English RegionJOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 4 2000Stephen Turner The growing interest in forensic risk assessment in intellectual disability services reflects the perception that deinstitutionalization has exposed more people to a greater risk of offending. However, ,risk' and the related idea of ,dangerousness' are problematic concepts because of connotations of dichotomous definition, stability and predictability. Assessment instruments in mainstream forensic psychiatry often combine actuarial and clinical data, and increasingly stress the dynamic nature of risk as well as the importance of situational and accidental triggers. Despite this increasing sophistication of research in mainstream forensic psychiatry, the ability to predict future offending behaviour remains very limited. Furthermore, actuarial predictors developed in studies of psychiatric or prison populations may not be valid for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Offending behaviour among people with intellectual disabilities is also hard to circumscribe because it often does not invoke full legal process or even reporting to the police. In order to discover how such problems were reflected in practice, a survey of providers in the North-west Region of England was undertaken. Seventy out of 106 providers identified as possibly relevant to this inquiry responded to a short postal questionnaire. Twenty-nine (42%) respondents , mainly in the statutory sector , reported operating a risk assessment policy relating to offending. The number of risk assessments completed in the previous year varied from none to ,several hundred'. Providers reported three main kinds of problems: (1) resources or service configuration; (2) interagency or interdisciplinary cooperation or coordination; and (3) issues relating to the effectiveness, design and content of assessment. [source] Health, Social Movements, and Rights-based Litigation in South AfricaJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2008Marius Pieterse This article investigates the impact of rights-based litigation on social struggles in the South African health sector. It considers the manner in which individuals and social movements have utilized rights and the legal process in their efforts to dismantle the ill-health/poverty cycle, in the particular context of the struggle for universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. Relying on literature concerning the transformative potential of socio-economic rights litigation and on examples from South African case law, the article critically evaluates the gains that have been made and the obstacles that have been encountered in this context. It argues that rights-based litigation presents a powerful tool in the struggle against poverty, but also elaborates on structural and institutional hurdles that continue to inhibit the effectiveness of rights-based strategies in this regard. [source] Some implications for nurses and managers of recent changes to the processing and hearing of medical negligence claimsJOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2000DIPLAW, Fletcher BA, MPHIL Aim This paper considers some possible implications for individual nurses and their managers of moves to delegate tasks formerly undertaken by medical practitioners to nurses, in the light of recent changes in the legal process, relating to the funding and the hearing of cases of medical negligence. Background It is suggested that the introduction of a system of conditional fees, under which lawyers will only recover their costs if they win cases, may lead to a more specialist approach to negligence claims and to greater scrutiny of medical evidence. The implications of the recent ,Bolitho' judgement, when judges for the first time subjected expert medical testimony to their own independent analysis, are also explored. Findings It is suggested that in the light of the disparities in the training of medical and nursing personnel and in their disciplinary processes, and in view of the lack of consensus about what training is necessary for those who will substitute for junior doctors, or represent themselves as ,practitioners', ,specialists', or ,consultants', that nurses may in the future find themselves more directly involved in civil proceedings. [source] A judicial presentation of evidence of a student culture of "dealing"JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 4 2009Nathan B. Wood Abstract This study uses a new-to-educational-research methodology, based on the legal process, to build a case that U.S. students have been largely ignored in discussion and planning for their own, presumed futures. A variety of evidence, from two large and distinct data bases, is drawn together to show: (1) students perceive their classrooms in ways distinctly different from the ways in which teachers perceive the same classrooms, (2) students' values are fundamentally different from teachers', (3) student and teacher cultures work together to perpetuate the status quo, and (4) existing educational policy, and the research on which it is based, does not adequately consider student culture. A global student culture of "dealing" is described and it is argued that this culture is an underlying cause of the deterioration in the achievement of U.S. students and the failures of so many reform efforts to bring about substantial and lasting change. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 421,441, 2009 [source] Mobilizing the Law in China: "Informed Disenchantment" and the Development of Legal ConsciousnessLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 4 2006Mary E. Gallagher This article critically examines the development of legal consciousness among legal aid plaintiffs in Shanghai. It is based on 16 months of research at a large legal aid center and in-depth interviews with 50 plaintiffs. Chinese legal aid plaintiffs come to the legal process with high expectations about the possibility of protecting their rights; however, they also have only a vague and imprecise knowledge of legal procedure and their actual codified rights. Through this process of legal mobilization, plaintiffs' legal consciousness changes in two separate dimensions: changes in one's feelings of efficacy and competency vis-à-vis the law, and changes in one's perception/evaluation of the legal system. Put another way, the first dimension is "How well can I work the law?" and the second is "How well does the law work?" In this study I observe positive changes in feelings of individual efficacy and competency that are combined with more negative evaluations/perceptions of the legal system in terms of its fairness and effectiveness. The positive feelings of efficacy and voice provided by the legal process encourage labor dispute plaintiffs in the post-dispute period to plan new lawsuits and to help friends and relatives with their legal problems. Disenchantment with the promises of the legal system does not lead to despondency, but to more critical, informed action. This study provides new evidence on the nature of China's developing legal system with a focus on the social response to the state-led "rule of law" project. [source] Improving the Civil-Criminal Interface for Victims of Domestic ViolenceTHE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 4 2007AMANDA L. ROBINSON The ,interface' between civil and criminal courts is completely dependent upon the advocates that support victims through the legal process, rather than any formal policy or procedure. Whilst in Cardiff these arrangements appear to be effective, developing the interface between civil and criminal courts needs to be a national endeavour to provide a consistent and streamlined response to victims of domestic violence. The co-ordination of civil with criminal justice represents the best hope of keeping victims and their children safe. [source] The Ethic of Diversity: Local Law and the Negotiation of Urban NormsLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 4 2008Mariana Valverde Toronto prides itself both on being diverse and on celebrating rather than merely tolerating diversity. Urban diversity has been studied by demographers, sociologists, and planners, but sociolegal analyses of the negotiation of diversity are scarce. The study described here has three elements: a study of the Toronto Licensing Tribunal, a challenge to the property standards by-law, and a campaign to reform the rules governing street food. The key substantive finding of the research is that municipal legal processes, in a city that takes pride in its diversity, still work to effect and naturalize distinctly ethnocentric norms. The content of (some) norms is subject to revision but the normative power of law as such remains unchallenged. Methodologically, the article, inspired by Bruno Latour and Actor Network Theory, shows the usefulness of treating local legal processes as a series of networks in which nonhuman objects (such as weeds, courtroom Bibles, and hot dogs) can sometimes be protagonists of legal dramas rather than mere objects. [source] The Shared History: Unknotting Fictive Kinship and Legal ProcessLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Marie-Andrée Jacob This article looks in detail at a form of kinship that is contingently crafted and mobilized to achieve specific purposes. On the basis of ethnographic material collected among local actors within bodies that regulate kidney transplants in Israel, the objective of this article is to expand the sociolegal definition of fictive kinship. I use transplant relatedness to refer to the set of formal and informal norms that grow out of social and medico-legal practices in the field of kidney donations and sales; however, the form of fictive kinship that appears in this specific field tells us something broader about kinship as it is constructed and performed in legal processes more generally. The configuration of fictive kinship that is examined is the shared history (historia meshoutefet). I argue that in the present case, the shared history alters social and legal deep-seated understandings of kinship and ultimately makes the distinctions between allegedly real and pseudo-kinship collapse. [source] | ||||||||||||||||